Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and today's episode is from our vault. It is
Speaker 1: one from last year, and it ties in nicely with
Speaker 1: the other Fall Break reruns that we ran this week.
Speaker 1: This is going to be our discussion of the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two super weird sci fi thriller Horror Express. This
Speaker 1: one has Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and it all
Speaker 1: takes place on a train, so it's a perfect fit.
Speaker 1: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: All Right, all aboard, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And actually I was just thinking, Rob,
Speaker 3: is this technically our first Weird House Cinema episode of
Speaker 3: the Halloween season? Or are you count Absurd the movie
Speaker 3: we did last week even though it wasn't October yet.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and count Absurd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, you were jumping the gun a bit, but
Speaker 3: that's okay.
Speaker 1: If Load's and Home Depot can do it, then so
Speaker 1: can so can we.
Speaker 3: If I told you about how my daughter has been
Speaker 3: getting Halloween brained.
Speaker 1: You've told me a little bit about this. I've seen
Speaker 1: some some curious illustrations from your house as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Rachel may have showed you. Okay, So my
Speaker 3: daughter is almost two years old, and I didn't do
Speaker 3: this on purpose. I don't know how this happened. She
Speaker 3: has become obsessed with skeletons, and so one of her
Speaker 3: favorite activities over the past I don't know, probably two
Speaker 3: or three weeks now, has been demanding that that my
Speaker 3: wife and I draw skeletons for her and extend, you know,
Speaker 3: any friends or family visiting the house. Also, they are
Speaker 3: supposed to draw skeletons. So we have big pieces of
Speaker 3: cardboard on the back porch and she'll she'll like lead
Speaker 3: you out under the porch and say draw it, sketon,
Speaker 3: Draw it, sketon, And so we do, and then she
Speaker 3: wants another one, and another one and another one, and
Speaker 3: the demand for skeletons is unlimited. She will keep asking
Speaker 3: you to draw them until you just say no, I
Speaker 3: am done, no more skeletons. And then she also likes
Speaker 3: to name them. The other day, I think I drew
Speaker 3: four of them and they were named teeth, Teeth, Big teeth,
Speaker 3: and teeth and so somehow I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: genetic or whatever, but she has got Halloween on the brain.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. Yeah, you guys got to bust out
Speaker 1: some skeleton based media here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if there are any child friendly
Speaker 3: skeleton movies now.
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it in a while, so I can't
Speaker 1: speak to anything that might be inappropriate in it, because
Speaker 1: this is the case when you get into some of
Speaker 1: these older cartoons. But the nineteen twenty nine Skeleton Dance
Speaker 1: Silly Symphony from Walt Disney Dancing Skeletons, that is a
Speaker 1: lot of fun and pretty tame unless there's something that
Speaker 1: I am not remembering. At the top of my head.
Speaker 1: I think it's on Disney Plus, so maybe that's a
Speaker 1: good sign that maybe it's and there's nothing objectionable in it,
Speaker 1: but I'm not.
Speaker 3: Sure technically, I don't even know if she knows that
Speaker 3: skeletons are supposed to be scary. Maybe just no one
Speaker 3: has communicated to her that this is frightening material.
Speaker 1: Does she know that there's one inside each of us?
Speaker 3: We've talked about this. I don't know if the fact
Speaker 3: has really sunk in, But Yeah, we've told her that
Speaker 3: she has a skeleton, and we all have skeletons. They're
Speaker 3: all under the skin.
Speaker 1: Such an exciting time.
Speaker 3: Oh but sorry to divert us along the Baby Looked
Speaker 3: at Me track. Today on Weird House Cinema, we are
Speaker 3: going to be talking about the nineteen seventy two train
Speaker 3: horror thriller Horror Express during Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Sylvia Tortosa,
Speaker 3: and Telly Savalis. Now, you might automatically think, based on
Speaker 3: the cast list, especially the first two names, that this
Speaker 3: is a Hammer Film production, but actually it is not.
Speaker 3: I have no proof of this, but I would suspect
Speaker 3: the filmmakers were consciously trying to get some Hammer special
Speaker 3: sauce on their product by casting both Lee and Cushing.
Speaker 3: That's your classic, you know, Dracula movie or Mummy movie,
Speaker 3: whatever it is. The Hammer Film's pairing. Usually Christopher Lee
Speaker 3: is Dracula, Peter Cushing is Van Helsing. Here they play
Speaker 3: with the formula a little formula a little bit. Neither
Speaker 3: one of them is the villain of the film, but
Speaker 3: you do get both, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this was actually a British Spanish co production
Speaker 1: on the British side of things, we have Benmark Productions.
Speaker 1: They would go on to make or they made Psychomania,
Speaker 1: which came out this following year. Wonderful film that we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the show before.
Speaker 3: I think about Psychomania all the time. That was one
Speaker 3: of our supernatural biker movies. It is the one where
Speaker 3: a British biker gang does witchcraft and realizes they can
Speaker 3: come back from the dead. I think, what's the catch.
Speaker 3: They just have to really believe that it'll work or something,
Speaker 3: and so they get to come back from the dead
Speaker 3: and be undead biker revenants and ride around like knocking
Speaker 3: things over in grocery stores and terrorizing motorists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wonderful film with a nice grim sense
Speaker 1: of humor at the heart of everything. So yeah, Benmar
Speaker 1: Productions on the British side. And then on the Spanish
Speaker 1: side of things, we have Granada Films, which I'm not
Speaker 1: certain on this, but as best I can tell, this
Speaker 1: is a separate entity from Granada Television, which was a
Speaker 1: British company named after a city in Spain that the
Speaker 1: founder had just visited on holiday. It was like Granada,
Speaker 1: That's that's what I should name my television production company
Speaker 1: that'll go on to make Trelock Comes TV and so forth.
Speaker 1: This would be a separate Granada as far as I
Speaker 1: understand it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also separate from the Hello Muta, Hello Fata.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, of course. So Horror Express is a film
Speaker 1: we've been looking to do for a while and we
Speaker 1: just kind of wanted to line it up with core
Speaker 1: episodes of stuff to blow your mind that had to
Speaker 1: do with trains, so it finally worked. But this movie
Speaker 1: is a lot of things. It is a splendid looking
Speaker 1: period horror film and the hammer tradition set in Imperial Russia.
Speaker 1: It's a monster movie. It's a murder on a train story.
Speaker 1: It's also a science fiction tale with some of the
Speaker 1: loosest and sloppiest sigh ever to back up some figh
Speaker 1: but it also manages to stir the viewers' thoughts and imagination,
Speaker 1: even as it at times insults your understanding of science.
Speaker 1: It's a film built around the classically trained performances of
Speaker 1: Cushing and Lee, but it's also a showcase for native
Speaker 1: Spanish talent other international talent, and I guess the brasher
Speaker 1: acting style of America's Telly Savalis that's right.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to talk about his role.
Speaker 1: So again, there's a lot of things, but it is delightful, unique,
Speaker 1: and I think often highly effective as well. Like it
Speaker 1: does feel a little sloppy and loose in places and
Speaker 1: can be a little confusing in places also, but I
Speaker 1: think largely succeeds, and that's why it's developed a cult
Speaker 1: following over the decades.
Speaker 3: It is known as ludicrous, but also I think it's
Speaker 3: super entertaining. The twists just keep coming, and they're very
Speaker 3: i don't know, to my mind, at least very fun twists.
Speaker 3: It also, like you're saying, it has this excellent cast
Speaker 3: of unusual characters, I will say a limitation is the
Speaker 3: first time I saw it, my attention was slightly divided
Speaker 3: on first viewing, and I ended up mixing up several
Speaker 3: of the characters in my head and getting extremely confused
Speaker 3: as to who was who. I think I was mixing
Speaker 3: up Inspector Mirov and the engineer who knows about science
Speaker 3: and rockets and gravity, and then I was also mixing
Speaker 3: up Sylvia Tortosa and Helga Line possibly some other characters
Speaker 3: as well. Also. I showed this movie to some good
Speaker 3: friends last night, and I could tell it a couple
Speaker 3: of parts. I think they were confused because they had
Speaker 3: mixed up a couple of characters. Also, so warning it
Speaker 3: is one of those sometimes this happens, especially with older movies.
Speaker 3: But do not let that discourage you. Horror Express is
Speaker 3: just wonderful. Even if you get a few of the
Speaker 3: characters mixed up, it's gonna be okay. Also, despite the
Speaker 3: problems it creates with remembering all the different identities, the
Speaker 3: large cast of characters is useful for the plot because
Speaker 3: the monster really runs through them at a quite efficient pace. Yeah.
Speaker 3: A couple of other acting notes about this. I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this movie made me think about how there
Speaker 3: are really two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls. So
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee, I think you could argue, is the main
Speaker 3: protagonist of this film, though I don't know. It's more
Speaker 3: of an ensemble cast. I would say, but christaph Lee
Speaker 3: is like the person who speaks in the opening narration,
Speaker 3: so we're with him before anyone else. And so the
Speaker 3: two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls are the jolly,
Speaker 3: ironic christpher Lee and the severe Christopher Lee. And in
Speaker 3: this movie we do get the severe christ FH. Lee.
Speaker 3: I would say the jolly Christopher Lee prototype in my
Speaker 3: mind is the Lord Sumerle performance in The wicker Man.
Speaker 3: And they are two very different kinds of presences. And
Speaker 3: so maybe we can talk later on about, you know,
Speaker 3: what the difference in feeling is and why you deploy
Speaker 3: each one. But I thought that was kind of interesting
Speaker 3: because he's also with Peter Cushing in this film, and
Speaker 3: Peter Cushing kind of gets to be the more jolly
Speaker 3: or ironic version of Christopher Lee here. Peter Cushing usually,
Speaker 3: I don't know, he plays a slightly cheekier, jollier, more
Speaker 3: enthusiastic stick character than Peter Cushing often does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Peter Cushing And what I saw an
Speaker 1: extra with the director of this film pointed out that
Speaker 1: Peter Cushion could often play a warmer character. Now at
Speaker 1: the same time, Peter Cushon could also play evil characters
Speaker 1: and and could play you know, ridiculous and silly characters.
Speaker 1: He was a highly skilled and professional actor. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee, there's the jolly and there's the stern. Though
Speaker 1: it is clear which one of these two Christopher Leees
Speaker 1: you know, cash the pay checks. Yeah, it's the stern.
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee that most people wanted to cast. And so
Speaker 1: there's even a spectrum there where you have like the
Speaker 1: stern hero side of things, like the lead character and
Speaker 1: the Devil Rides Out, Yes, which.
Speaker 3: Was zimon, I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a character that is at once the hero and
Speaker 1: also so stern as to be thoroughly.
Speaker 3: Unlikable, constantly sending other characters to bed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in this film, you know, we have a stern
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee that also has a few wrinkles to the
Speaker 1: character that I think make it a little more interesting
Speaker 1: than that. And then of course there's a whole other
Speaker 1: realm of stern villain Christopher Lee, where you have the
Speaker 1: likes of Dracula and Sorrowman. So yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is I think one of the more nuanced and human
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee performances we've discussed on the show before.
Speaker 3: Yes, this severe Christopher Lee is very different than the
Speaker 3: one in The Devil Rides Out. The one in The
Speaker 3: Devil Rides Out. This is a good point you make.
Speaker 3: And the Devil Rides Out, he is moralistic and paternalistic,
Speaker 3: and that's not how he is here. Instead, he is
Speaker 3: a very cold and amorl and intellectual until he sort
Speaker 3: of has to have a has to have a heroic
Speaker 3: moment at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and is also eventually self aware a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like there's a part where a character asks him if
Speaker 1: he doesn't care about the people that have died so far,
Speaker 1: at which at that point was like a thief and
Speaker 1: a man that worked in the baggage car. And he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't care, but I should. Like, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: wrinkle to the character that, like, he realizes that he's
Speaker 1: cold and insensitive and he should strive to be better.
Speaker 3: I would be a better man if I did care. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also on the acting front, I think this movie
Speaker 3: is interesting because it is part of a category of
Speaker 3: films that you might call the third act takeover films,
Speaker 3: in films in which a brand new character shows up
Speaker 3: in the final third of the movie and completely seizes
Speaker 3: command of the screen. I don't know if you would
Speaker 3: agree with me, but that's how I feel. That's what
Speaker 3: I feel Telly Savalis does in this movie. Once Telly
Speaker 3: Savalis shows up, the movie just becomes the Telly Savalis
Speaker 3: Show until he is until he is dispatched by the monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too that he was clearly prominently featured in
Speaker 1: the promotional material for this movie, but he doesn't show
Speaker 1: up for an hour, and even then it's like he's
Speaker 1: not really he's not a major character. He plays an
Speaker 1: important role and when he is on screen thoroughly captivating.
Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely a third act takeover. I like that terminology.
Speaker 3: Listeners right in with other examples of this. I want
Speaker 3: to start making a list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the chief examples
Speaker 1: would be Kurts and Apocalypse Now another charismatic bald man.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how many third act takeovers are
Speaker 1: by charismatic bald men. I would be interested to know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just these two listeners. Let us know, all right,
Speaker 1: what's the elevator pitch here? Joe?
Speaker 3: Well, So, the official tagline on the poster is I
Speaker 3: think one of the worst I've ever heard. It says,
Speaker 3: your non stop ride to hell boards at eight pm?
Speaker 3: Can it be stopped?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Is it NonStop or isn't it? I think that could.
Speaker 3: I could stand a bit of work shopping.
Speaker 1: But I do like that it gets into some of
Speaker 1: the ideas. We discussed about train horror fiction on the
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind this week.
Speaker 1: The idea that the train cannot be stopped, that the
Speaker 1: train is a journey of fate. Yes, and perhaps that
Speaker 1: fate is very much in question. What will happen to
Speaker 1: us at the end of this line?
Speaker 3: Mm, yeah, that's a good point. But what's our weird
Speaker 3: house cinema elevator pitch? I'm gonna say, climb aboard a
Speaker 3: human being, disembark with butt cheek brain.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're gonna have to go ahead and
Speaker 1: explain butt cheek brain. So people, No, you're not just
Speaker 1: being inn here.
Speaker 3: No, just wait, wait, the listeners will wait. We'll talk
Speaker 3: about it in the plot section.
Speaker 1: All right, it is related to the plot. It is
Speaker 1: related to the plot. All right. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: listen to just a little bit of the trailer audio
Speaker 1: from this picture because it has some fun narration.
Speaker 4: Million years in these subterranean caves, a creature of superhuman
Speaker 4: evil was entombed in a wall of ice, waiting to
Speaker 4: be free, waiting to live again. Travel with us on
Speaker 4: a journey into a world where nightmare becomes reality.
Speaker 1: Are you telling me that an ape that lived two
Speaker 1: million years ago got out to that rate, killed the
Speaker 1: baggage man and put him in there. Yes, I am,
Speaker 1: it's alive.
Speaker 3: It must be.
Speaker 4: Travel with us if you dare on the Horror Express.
Speaker 1: All right, If you would like to go watch Horror
Speaker 1: Express before proceeding with the rest of this episode, we
Speaker 1: encourage it. Go watch it or rewatch it. It is
Speaker 1: widely available. I watched it on the excellent Severin Blu ray,
Speaker 1: rented from Atlanta's own videodrome. Here. There also seems to
Speaker 1: be an excellent Aero Films Blu ray with many of
Speaker 1: the same special features. I'm not sure which one is
Speaker 1: the most recent release and which one's more easily accessible
Speaker 1: if you're ordering this online, But as usual, we just
Speaker 1: urge you to watch it in the best quality you
Speaker 1: can find, be that physical or digital, because it's actually
Speaker 1: a great looking film, and I think it long circulated
Speaker 1: in subpar quality, so yeah, get as good of a
Speaker 1: cut as you can find.
Speaker 3: There. I think is a version streaming on Amazon Prime
Speaker 3: that does not look very good, so I don't know
Speaker 3: if there are multiple versions on there. Maybe there's a
Speaker 3: better looking one than the one I initially watched, but
Speaker 3: at least one of them on there is not the best,
Speaker 3: so yeah, seek it out in the good quality. Also,
Speaker 3: you know, we were talking talking about how the cast
Speaker 3: list seems to be trying to call to mind Hammer films,
Speaker 3: it also looks like a Hammer film. And did you
Speaker 3: notice that the use of the technicolor, the sets, the photography,
Speaker 3: the costumes, it's all. It has an extremely Hammer reminiscent
Speaker 3: visual style.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think they do a great job of
Speaker 1: creating a like a period look that you completely buy,
Speaker 1: even as the film delves increasingly into speculative and wild territory.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the people involved here, Beginning
Speaker 1: with the director. It's Eugenio Martin, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: five through twenty twenty three, Spanish director, probably best known
Speaker 1: internationally anyway for this film and a handful of other
Speaker 1: horror pictures, nineteen sixty two's Hypnosi, nineteen seventy one's The
Speaker 1: Fourth Victim starring Carol Baker, nineteen seventy three is a
Speaker 1: Candle for the Devil starring Judy Gleeson, nineteen eighty's The
Speaker 1: House and the Outskirts, and nineteen eighty two's Return of
Speaker 1: the Poltergeist, which features one of the best bits of
Speaker 1: terrible VHS box art ever.
Speaker 3: Is that the one that looks like a like a
Speaker 3: werewolf aerobic exercise tape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's gripping a bowling ball or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it looks pretty wild. He also directed
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty six western The Ugly Ones and the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two film Pancho Villa starring Telly Savas, and
Speaker 1: the film Pancho Villa is actually a key to understanding
Speaker 1: this film. So that was an Italian Spanish spaghetti western
Speaker 1: featuring several connections to this film, but most notably the
Speaker 1: train itself, which the producers had purchased for the production
Speaker 1: of Pancho Villa, and in order to maximize their investment,
Speaker 1: they said, well, what else can we do with this train?
Speaker 1: Let's do another train movie. Somebody get me another script,
Speaker 1: and this eventually led to the creation of the script
Speaker 1: for a Horror Express, reusing the same train. So you know, set,
Speaker 1: slash location, slash train and presumably the really I thought
Speaker 1: excellent train model. So any of these external, moving wide
Speaker 1: shots of the train in this movie are model shots.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I didn't realize that I thought some of
Speaker 3: them were real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same here. It wasn't until I went into the
Speaker 1: extras on the disc and there's an interview with the
Speaker 1: director here with Martin, and he's like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with this train, Like say,
Speaker 1: Peter Cushion and Christopher Lee were there with me and
Speaker 1: we would just run this train around. But it's like
Speaker 1: a large scale model, so it doesn't look as small,
Speaker 1: and they did, I think, a great job with the
Speaker 1: landscapes for it, so excellent model train, Like you don't
Speaker 1: even think about it being a model train until like
Speaker 1: one key scene towards the end of the picture.
Speaker 3: We were talking in our episode about the Green Slime
Speaker 3: about how I love miniature models, even when they're bad.
Speaker 3: But these are good. These are like really realistic, solid,
Speaker 3: excellent looking crossing the Siberian landscape.
Speaker 1: All right, Moving on to the writers, we have Arnaul Dussau,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety American playwright and
Speaker 1: B movie screenwriter. The son of noted Silent era screenwriter
Speaker 1: and director Leon du Sou and actress O'tala Nesmith. Arnault
Speaker 1: here wrote some serious plays. He wrote nineteen forty One's
Speaker 1: Lady Scarface, as well as a handful of other projects,
Speaker 1: but his career seems to have been impacted by the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Blacklist in nineteen fifty. He was also a writer
Speaker 1: on nineteen seventy three Psychomania. Likewise, we should mention that
Speaker 1: this film, as with Pancho Villa, was produced by American
Speaker 1: writer producer Bernard Gordon, who was also forced to work
Speaker 1: in exile, mostly in Spain, due to the Hollywood Blacklist.
Speaker 1: His productions include Flesh and Fury from fifty two, Earth
Speaker 1: Versus the Flying Saucers from fifty six, fifty five, Days
Speaker 1: at Pee King from sixty three, and The Day of
Speaker 1: the Triffids nineteen sixty three. On some films he ended
Speaker 1: up working like uncredited due to his blacklisted status.
Speaker 3: Mmmm oh but wait, so with Dusseau here, it's not
Speaker 3: just the same production company on the British side as Psychomania,
Speaker 3: but literally one of the same writers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, two very different films. Like they don't
Speaker 1: feel like spiritual siblings, but in a sense they are.
Speaker 3: I guess can you imagine if Christopher Lee had been
Speaker 3: in Psychomania? How good it would be?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man, Yeah, yeah, I mean, there was a role
Speaker 1: for him there, but yeah, it would have been a yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have been a different trajectory for that picture.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if you get a name like
Speaker 1: Lee in there. Let's see, there's another writer credit, and
Speaker 1: that's Julian Zimmitt, who lived nineteen nineteen through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: American born writer whose other screenwriting credits include Pancho Villa
Speaker 1: and Psychomania Wow. Now getting into the cast, we have
Speaker 1: a number of repeat performers for Weird House, So as
Speaker 1: usual for names like this, we're not going to go
Speaker 1: add deep into their filmographies. We're just going to maybe
Speaker 1: try and put them in the context of this production.
Speaker 1: Starting at the top top build, we have of course
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee playing Professor Sir Alexander Saxton. Lee lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two through twenty fifteen, British horror legend. Here cast
Speaker 1: as as we said, essentially the good guy scientist. He's
Speaker 1: you know, but it's also again it's interesting because he's
Speaker 1: a bit cold, but he's he acknowledges that he's a
Speaker 1: bit too cold and unfeeling. He's also the guy who
Speaker 1: unleashes a murderous monster on everyone and he's also I
Speaker 1: thought I enjoyed some of the details about him being
Speaker 1: a bit naive about the realities of international travel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. When he first shows up at the train
Speaker 3: station at the beginning of the movie, you know, he
Speaker 3: can't get aboard the train, and he's like, but I
Speaker 3: have arranged I have arranged passage, and they're like, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 3: you're not in the books. And then Peter Cushing just
Speaker 3: walks in. He's like, you're supposed to pay them a bribe.
Speaker 3: Look here, here's how you do the bribe, and Lee
Speaker 3: is like, I refuse and instead just like throws all
Speaker 3: the guy's stuff off his desk and bullies him into
Speaker 3: getting him on the train. So, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's what's the morally superior act there to participate in
Speaker 3: a corrupt system and give a bribe to or to
Speaker 3: bully the station master until they let you on the train.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there's maybe a case to be
Speaker 1: made that they're both they're both examples of some sort
Speaker 1: of British ideal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this film came out the same year as Dracula
Speaker 1: AD nineteen seventy two, and also alongside The London Underground
Speaker 1: cannibal film Deathline, as well as there's like a Spanish
Speaker 1: absurdist movie that has Lee in it from the same
Speaker 1: year as well, um umbrackel Umbrossel. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how to say this, but a less known absurdist film.
Speaker 1: I don't know that Lee even has a big role
Speaker 1: in it, but he is credited.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about that. Are we going to
Speaker 3: talk about Deathline one day?
Speaker 1: I hope. So that is a film about underground cannibals.
Speaker 1: It has Christopher Lee in a very typical Christopher Lee role,
Speaker 1: but then it has Donald Pleasance in a wonderfully atypical
Speaker 1: casting as a blue collar police inspector. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, though the monsters just kind of like gross.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cannibals in the tube. I think we talked
Speaker 3: about this movie not in a Weird House, but we
Speaker 3: talked about it in Passing in a core episode we
Speaker 3: did about the London underground mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's right, that's right. Peter Cushing, of course, is
Speaker 1: in this plays Doctor Wells. He lived nineteen thirteen through
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, legendary horror icon, frequently co star and
Speaker 1: Cushing's character has elements of his often type cast role
Speaker 1: as a relatable elder scientist or investigator, though again with
Speaker 1: some a few added touches of a p upper British
Speaker 1: scoundrel that I liked. You know, he knows how to
Speaker 1: bribe local officials. He seems to be maybe a bit
Speaker 1: of a flirt.
Speaker 3: He's got a bit more of a twinkle in his
Speaker 3: eye in this movie than he does in a lot
Speaker 3: of his roles. More often he plays a very straight
Speaker 3: forward good guy. Here he's a bit of a rascal,
Speaker 3: and I like that.
Speaker 1: This film is notable in Cushing's careers that occurs as
Speaker 1: a number of other films do in this period, directly
Speaker 1: following the death of his wife, Violet, which reportedly had
Speaker 1: just a devastating effect on him, to the point that
Speaker 1: he initially expressed his desire to just not do this film.
Speaker 1: He apparently like flew out to meet the director and
Speaker 1: was like, look, I wanted to tell you this in person,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I can do this. And it
Speaker 1: was Christopher Lee, who was not only his frequent co
Speaker 1: star but a close friend, who convinced him to press on,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep working and supported him through the production,
Speaker 1: and Cushing seems to have really thrown himself into work
Speaker 1: during this period, because they're six different films from this
Speaker 1: year featuring Cushing. There's Tales from the Crypt Dracula AD
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Doctor Five's Rises Again, Asylum, Fear the Night,
Speaker 1: and Horror Express. And really, I mean Cushing is always
Speaker 1: such a consummate professional and so great on screen.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I see people review these films and discuss ways in
Speaker 1: which they can see this effect on his performance. But
Speaker 1: I've never been able to see that. I feel like
Speaker 1: like Cushing is still the consummate pro. He's still great
Speaker 1: at embodying a character on screen. I don't, for my money,
Speaker 1: I would not notice this, you know, inner suffering that
Speaker 1: may have been going on at the time. Again, it's
Speaker 1: a fun role and not you know, sometimes he would play,
Speaker 1: even in films from around this time period, a more
Speaker 1: haunted character, which I guess might reflect what he was
Speaker 1: going through more. But this is this is not a
Speaker 1: haunted character. This is a guy who's I think, mostly
Speaker 1: having a good time as he travels across the continent.
Speaker 1: All Right, we mentioned Telly's This is the first time
Speaker 1: we've talked about a film with Telly Savalis. He plays
Speaker 1: a Cossack by the name of Captain Kazan, who, again,
Speaker 1: as you said, shows up an hour into the picture
Speaker 1: in the third act.
Speaker 3: If you've only seen the movie once a long time ago,
Speaker 3: you will probably misremember him as being there throughout the
Speaker 3: entire movie because he makes such an impression when he
Speaker 3: shows up. As we said earlier, he just takes over
Speaker 3: once he arrives, and it's his movie until he's gone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus, I mean it is the kind of character he
Speaker 1: plays a Yeah, a belligerent captain who is tyrannical to
Speaker 1: everybody except for you know, the count of the Countess.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 1: Savalis lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four. Third
Speaker 1: build on this and often a key part of the
Speaker 1: promotion for the film, even though he doesn't appear till later.
Speaker 1: It's a very memorable role. He believes it brings a
Speaker 1: lot of chaotic energy, you know, a different acting style.
Speaker 1: Martin and the extras talked about how with Cushing and
Speaker 1: Lee you got pretty much the same, the same thing
Speaker 1: every take because they you know, they had everything down
Speaker 1: in their head and they knew exactly how they were
Speaker 1: going to play it, and they'd give you the same
Speaker 1: thing again. But Savalis had just a different like operating
Speaker 1: method in place, like he might try radically different things.
Speaker 1: He'd want to mix it up. He'd want other things
Speaker 1: to be different so that he could like act off
Speaker 1: of them. And I think you see that in some
Speaker 1: of the like when he's a board, he's like he's
Speaker 1: taking a shot of vodka and just throwing the shot glass,
Speaker 1: you know, across the train car. Things like that that
Speaker 1: do feel wild. And he has essentially taken the whole
Speaker 1: train hostage during this this sequence as well, So it
Speaker 1: makes sense.
Speaker 3: What would you say the alignment of this character is.
Speaker 3: I feel like he vacillates between sort of chaotic neutral,
Speaker 3: lawful evil and then chaotic evil.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, there's a waffling there. He's he's
Speaker 1: there to just impose his will as much as actually
Speaker 1: solve anything. But we'll get more into the details of
Speaker 1: his arrival when we get to it in the plot.
Speaker 1: But American actor here, who's TV credits date back to
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties. He came up in radio and
Speaker 1: then television insteadily got more and more into TV acting
Speaker 1: and then film, But everything apparently changed for him when
Speaker 1: he finally shaved that beautiful head of his for the
Speaker 1: role of Pontea's Pilot and the greatest story ever told
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty five, a look that he's stuck with
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He obviously had a
Speaker 1: great knack for playing tough guys, heavies, villains, and characters
Speaker 1: of dubious moral character, which of course culminates in such
Speaker 1: roles as Blofeld in nineteen sixty nine's On Her Majesty's
Speaker 1: Secret Service.
Speaker 3: That's a James Bond movie that kind of stands out
Speaker 3: because it was the only film to feature George Lazenbye
Speaker 3: in the role of James Bond. But it also stands
Speaker 3: out for a number of reasons. A lot of people
Speaker 3: rank it as like one of the best or the
Speaker 3: best of the series. I really love it because it
Speaker 3: has Diana Rigg as the character of Teresa, who James
Speaker 3: Bond gets married to. People forget that James Bond gets
Speaker 3: married in one of these movies. Yeah, she locked him
Speaker 3: down briefly, and unfortunately the movie ends tragically with her death.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Telly Sabalis is the villain In this one,
Speaker 3: he plays Blofeld, a Blofeld who is oddly concerned with
Speaker 3: trying to get a claim to being part of some
Speaker 3: kind of line of British nobility verified by some kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know, a house that like verifies your
Speaker 3: heraldry or something. So that's like James Bond's in into
Speaker 3: Blofeld's organization. In this movie. He pretends to be somebody
Speaker 3: who like verifies that somebody is part of a British
Speaker 3: aristoocratic line. And so Blofeld is doing that, and he's
Speaker 3: running an allergy clinic, I think in the Swiss Alps,
Speaker 3: and so there are all these people there who are
Speaker 3: trying to get cured of their allergies. And so that
Speaker 3: leads to this bizarre Telly Savalis recorded monologue where somebody
Speaker 3: was apparently allergic to chicken, and he's giving this hypnotic
Speaker 3: speech about adote. You remember how I taught you to
Speaker 3: love chickens, their taste, their voice.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's been a while since I've seen that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see. He also played a memorable, memorable sinister role
Speaker 1: in Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil from seventy three.
Speaker 1: I say memorable, but I really couldn't make it through
Speaker 1: that picture. Maybe it was just the wrong time for
Speaker 1: me to try and watch it.
Speaker 3: I love Mario Bava. That was one of my least
Speaker 3: favorites of his that I've tried to watch.
Speaker 1: He also played Elsie's So Tough in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: is the Muppet Movie.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Savalis is one of those guys that, especially as his
Speaker 1: career matured, he became like just a staple like celebrity.
Speaker 1: You know, he was just He's Telly Savalas who loves
Speaker 1: your baby. He did a lot of action films in
Speaker 1: various European productions, though, including a nineteen seventy one spaghetti
Speaker 1: western titled A Town Called Bastard that I've heard good
Speaker 1: things about, and on TV. He's best remembered for, of course,
Speaker 1: playing police detective and lollipop aficionado Kojak, with the whole
Speaker 1: thing being, of course, that Kojack is quit smoking, so
Speaker 1: he's using lollipops all the time to stand in for
Speaker 1: cigarettes or what have you, which apparently is what Telly
Speaker 1: Savalis himself was doing in real life.
Speaker 3: Dentists hate him.
Speaker 1: Savalas is apparently a big personality and had a reputation
Speaker 1: for if you were his friend, you know, he stood
Speaker 1: up for you, he'd help you out, he'd get you
Speaker 1: some work. And we'll get to an example of that
Speaker 1: here in a bit when we get to the music
Speaker 1: for this film.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, oh, but hey, hold on, this movie essentially
Speaker 3: has a Rasputant in it that we've got to talk about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is this character's name again? It's father Kujar Gardov. Yeah,
Speaker 1: played by the excellent Alberto de Mendoza of the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three through twenty eleven. Sometimes Mendozo's given higher billing
Speaker 1: than Savalis, as he should, because he plays a far
Speaker 1: more pivotal and I think equally memorable role in the picture.
Speaker 1: A rest putin esque Eastern Orthodox monk and advisor to
Speaker 1: the Count and countest. Just a wonderful screen presence, a
Speaker 1: real worm tongue who begins starts out devoted to the
Speaker 1: mysteries of our Lord, but is ready to instantly jump
Speaker 1: ship to Satan or any other power that provides better
Speaker 1: evidence of the unseen world.
Speaker 3: You know, there is actually a scene earlier in the
Speaker 3: movie where I realized upon second viewing. This is telegraphed
Speaker 3: because he presents himself as a principled man of God
Speaker 3: who will not be swayed. And then late, yeah, later
Speaker 3: he jumpship to Satan. But early on there's a scene
Speaker 3: where he's like trying to convince the Count and countest
Speaker 3: not to do something unseemly or evil, and the Count
Speaker 3: is like, shut up, I am the Count, I rule
Speaker 3: over you, and Father Pujardov is like, forgive me master.
Speaker 1: I guess wasn't it like she was going to wear
Speaker 1: a blue dress or something she was.
Speaker 3: Going to wear. She was going to wear I think
Speaker 3: a somewhat revealing dress while she goes and makes an
Speaker 3: appeal to the Englishman because you know, they know you
Speaker 3: can manipulate the Englishman with a bit of bosom showing,
Speaker 3: and so that's the idea. And he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that. And then the Count is like,
Speaker 3: but I am in charge, and he's like, that's right,
Speaker 3: you are in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. This is such a fun character. Mendoz
Speaker 1: is great. He was an Argentine actor who, in addition
Speaker 1: to work in Argentine cinema, also crossed over into numerous
Speaker 1: spaghetti westerns and European productions for a time. His many
Speaker 1: credits include seventy one's Lizard in a Woman's Skin and
Speaker 1: the Case of the Scorpion's Tail, as well as nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six is The People who Own the Dark. This
Speaker 1: last one, The People who Own the Dark, also featured
Speaker 1: Spanish horror icon Paul Nashi in a small role. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: I've seen this role of father Pujardev incorrectly credited to
Speaker 1: Paul Nashi, including on the current Wikipedia page for Horror Express. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I guess there's sort of
Speaker 1: aism once there. But as much as I love Paul Nashi,
Speaker 1: he is not in this film. It's Alberto de Mendoza
Speaker 1: and he's incredible.
Speaker 3: That's funny. I know, I looked at that wiki, but
Speaker 3: I did not catch that mistake. That's funny, not Paul Nashi.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: We mentioned the Countess, Countess Irina Petrovski played by Silvia Tortosa,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty four, Spanish
Speaker 1: actress active from sixty four through at least twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, we've discussed her on the show
Speaker 1: before because she appeared in Armando Diosario's nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: film The Lareles Grasp. Here she's a Russian countess de
Speaker 1: facto damsel in distress and wife to the count Marian Petrovski,
Speaker 1: played by Argentine actor Jorge Regod who lived nineteen oh
Speaker 1: five through nineteen.
Speaker 3: She's also quite good in this and has some very
Speaker 3: funny scenes where she's trying to butter up the Englishman,
Speaker 3: being like, oh, you know, we we love England. We'll
Speaker 3: get more into this later, while she's holding a dog
Speaker 3: that's squirming and basically screaming to get out of her arms.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great scene because of course the father,
Speaker 1: father of Prijordov, is like, he smells death. This train
Speaker 1: smells like death.
Speaker 3: Yes, the dog smells the devil on the strain. But
Speaker 3: she's great. But I forgot that. Sylvia Tortosa is also
Speaker 3: in the Louralized Grasp because we have at least two
Speaker 3: actors who were in Lauralized Grasp. But don't we Helga
Speaker 3: Line is in this.
Speaker 1: Yes, Helgaalainee. She played the Laura in The Lauralied Grasp
Speaker 1: and she was also in seventy three's Horror Rises from
Speaker 1: the Tomb, part of the Occult Power couple with Paul Nashi,
Speaker 1: and in this she plays Natasha, a suspicious character on
Speaker 1: the train, a very stylish character who wears this like
Speaker 1: green dragon dress. But yeah, she as we've previously discussed,
Speaker 1: she you know, stunning German born redhead who played a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of fem fatals but also a
Speaker 1: lot of supernatural vixens. In both of the films that
Speaker 1: we've covered, she plays some sort of supernatural creature or
Speaker 1: being or you know, magic user. And here she's it's
Speaker 1: a little less exciting, but she's still it's still always
Speaker 1: a treat when she's in a picture, Like, what's she
Speaker 1: up to? Probably nothing good, it may not be raising
Speaker 1: the dead, but but she's she's got some sort of scheme.
Speaker 3: You just know it.
Speaker 1: And then oh, we have the character Inspector Mirov played
Speaker 1: by Julio Pena lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: another great role in the picture, a doomed investigator aboard
Speaker 1: the Horror Express. He was a Spanish actor with credits
Speaker 1: going back to nineteen thirty who died shortly after the
Speaker 1: completion of this film.
Speaker 3: It's funny we're saying the Horror Express, like that is
Speaker 3: the name of the train canonically in the film, it
Speaker 3: is not. I don't remember what they call it, but
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be going on the Trans
Speaker 3: Siberian Railroad, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the Spanish title, the actual original title, translates
Speaker 1: to like panic on the Trans Liberian Railway or something,
Speaker 1: So nobody calls it the Horror Express, but it's easy
Speaker 1: to think of it as like, all aboard our express leaving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hack up your possessed apes, it's time to go, all right.
Speaker 1: A couple of just small credits here. The baggage man
Speaker 1: is very memorable. This is Victor Israel, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine through two thousand and nine, prolific Spanish actor
Speaker 1: with something like two hundred and fifteen credits. Very memorable face,
Speaker 1: very memorable eyes.
Speaker 3: He's got a look. He's bald, but with tremendous mutton chops.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then oh, this is one of those situations
Speaker 1: where I can't even point out which role he's playing here,
Speaker 1: he's just one of the Russian guards. But it is
Speaker 1: a Spanish actor, Jose Canalas who lived nineteen twenty five
Speaker 1: through twenty five fifteen. He played the creepy character Murdo
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three's Return of the Blind Dead that
Speaker 1: we talked about in the show previously.
Speaker 3: Oh, the kind of gravedigger guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the gravedigger guy who sells out the town to
Speaker 1: undead templars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Okay, looked a bit like Stephen King.
Speaker 3: Do I remember that? Right?
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. So you have fun roll in that here
Speaker 1: he's basically invisible, but he's in there somewhere. And then
Speaker 1: finally the composer. It's John Cassovus who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: through twenty fourteen. There's a fun interview with him on
Speaker 1: the As a Blu Ray extra on a couple of
Speaker 1: the discs that I referenced earlier. American composer who previously
Speaker 1: worked as an arranger on sixty sevens The Dirty Dozen
Speaker 1: and did I believe the theme song for Pancho Villa.
Speaker 1: He'd previously met Telly Savalis in London and the two
Speaker 1: became fast friends. So Savalas helped him break into film
Speaker 1: scores with this movie. And I have to say, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty fun score. You got this like haunting little
Speaker 1: melody that keeps recurring. And then how would you describe
Speaker 1: the electric guitar work in this picture?
Speaker 3: Joe ah Well, full disclosure. Actually just had to pause
Speaker 3: recording for a second to go look it up because
Speaker 3: I'd forgotten what you were referring to. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: an interesting electric guitar sound. I mean, in some cases
Speaker 3: it's almost a bit surf rock. There's a lot of reverb.
Speaker 3: It's a kind of echoee vibe electric guitar sound, some
Speaker 3: kind of droning notes, a lot of arpeggios. But then also, yeah,
Speaker 3: it'll hit a big chord and just.
Speaker 1: I love it. Cassavas composed the scores as well to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, various other pictures,
Speaker 1: and moved into TV work in Hollywood, working on a
Speaker 1: number of mainstream TV series, including of course Kojak. Because
Speaker 1: who loves you, Baby, Tellisavalis loves you and can help
Speaker 1: you get some work. So that's the fun connection. Back
Speaker 1: to tell Savalis sticking up for his friends. The Cassavas.
Speaker 1: Here in the interview extra, shares a story about how
Speaker 1: he was he met Savalis at a hotel, and Savalas
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna go up and take a nap,
Speaker 1: and so because I was just waiting downstairs, and like
Speaker 1: some guy comes in who had worked with them on
Speaker 1: a previous picture, and like Savalas comes down and like
Speaker 1: gives them, you know, a couple hundred bucks or something.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just apparently always doing things like that
Speaker 1: for people that were in his good graces.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 1: Yes, let's jump right into it.
Speaker 3: All right, A couple of things right at the top
Speaker 3: of this section here. First of all, I will say
Speaker 3: this movie has a number of twists and reveals in
Speaker 3: it that I found mighty pleasing to experience for myself.
Speaker 3: I've read they're ludicrous twists, and so I would be
Speaker 3: really sad if I spoiled them without warning, so be warned.
Speaker 3: I think this movie is a lot of fun you
Speaker 3: see without having anything spoiled, and to get to experience
Speaker 3: the WTF moments for yourself, So please do take that
Speaker 3: into consideration. I think this one is really fun to
Speaker 3: to learn the weird the weird developments in real time
Speaker 3: as you watch it. But if you haven't seen it
Speaker 3: and you want to keep listening anyway, That is okay.
Speaker 3: One thing I will do to kind of preserve some
Speaker 3: of the surprise later on, though we are going to
Speaker 3: talk about some of the weirdest reveals, is I think
Speaker 3: we'll get fuzzier in our description of the plot as
Speaker 3: we go on, so we might kind of do a
Speaker 3: pretty detailed first act description and then and then zoom
Speaker 3: out to to focus more on the on the big movements. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the credits begin with kind of sad, dreamy music.
Speaker 3: It's this melody that we will hear repeated many times
Speaker 3: throughout the film, sometimes whistled by a mysterious character. You
Speaker 3: don't know quite who it is, but the other characters
Speaker 3: are hearing it, sometimes played by the countest on the piano,
Speaker 3: sometimes just in the background on the soundtrack. But we
Speaker 3: get this sad, dreamy melody. We see the darkness of
Speaker 3: a tunnel, blinding headlamps in the distance, and the sound
Speaker 3: of railcars clattering over the tracks. The action begins with
Speaker 3: a long pan over a chain of black, jagged mountaintops
Speaker 3: with a starless blue twilight behind them, and the unmistakable
Speaker 3: voice of Christopher Lee comes in narrating. Here's what Christopher
Speaker 3: Lee says. He says, the following report to the Royal
Speaker 3: Geological Society by the undersigned Alexander Saxton is a true
Speaker 3: and faithful account of events that befell the Society's expedition
Speaker 3: in Manchuria. As the leader of the expedition, I must
Speaker 3: accept responsibility for its ending in disaster, but I leave
Speaker 3: to the judgment of the honorable members the decision as
Speaker 3: to where the blame for the catastrophe lies. After seeing
Speaker 3: the whole movie, I think I know where the blame lies.
Speaker 3: I'm that it seems pretty to me. Another thing about
Speaker 3: the beginning of this movie is that we are getting
Speaker 3: constantly contradictory signals about geographic locations within China. Did you
Speaker 3: notice this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is one of the areas where the
Speaker 1: film feels a little sloppy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like so, the monologue says that they're in Manchuria,
Speaker 3: but then there's a title on the screen that says
Speaker 3: the mountains are in Sichuan Province, which are different places.
Speaker 3: And then later when we get to the train station,
Speaker 3: there's a title on the screen that says it's in Peking,
Speaker 3: which is Beijing. But the characters are talking about being
Speaker 3: in Shanghai. Yeah, anyway, So back to either Sichuan Province
Speaker 3: or Manchuria, whichever it's supposed to be. As this monologue unfolds,
Speaker 3: we see a team of men dressed in heavy furs
Speaker 3: tramping through the remote mountains in the snow, and then
Speaker 3: they come upon an icy cavern with Christopher Lee in command.
Speaker 3: So he's going into the cavern with an old man
Speaker 3: as a guy. And in this role Christopher Lee, he
Speaker 3: has a very I don't know, it's a very pompous
Speaker 3: kind of look, even for Christopher Lee. He's sporting a
Speaker 3: black mustache, he's wearing a long red scarf and has
Speaker 3: this tall, boxy fur hat. I love his look for
Speaker 3: the outdoor weather here. But the question is what lies
Speaker 3: within the cave. Why it's a humanoid figure frozen solid
Speaker 3: in ice. So it's a toothy, waxy dude, a bit
Speaker 3: skeletal and a bit resinous, with sunken eyes and missing
Speaker 3: the cartilage part of the nose. And of course we
Speaker 3: get a dramatic music cue and a zoom in on
Speaker 3: the skeleton when they find it, or is it a skeleton?
Speaker 3: I guess it does have flesh on it.
Speaker 1: We're getting into one of the big questions of the
Speaker 1: picture here, and that is what is a fossil because
Speaker 1: the movie share as Hell doesn't seem to know.
Speaker 3: It is a stone. Robert, A fossil means a stone, yes.
Speaker 1: But then all so it can thaw out and move around.
Speaker 1: It's like, there's, yeah, there's some inconsistency regarding the condition
Speaker 1: of this specimen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we see later that this fossil quote unquote
Speaker 3: has you know, a frozen body slash fossil has been
Speaker 3: locked inside a large crate wrapped in a canvas cloth
Speaker 3: and chains with a padlock, and Saxton's companions are hauling
Speaker 3: the box down the mountain side. So they eventually arrive
Speaker 3: at a train station. Again, the confusion because the thing
Speaker 3: on the screen says it's in Peaking, and then characters
Speaker 3: start talking about being in Shanghai. It's possible I'm just
Speaker 3: missing something or confused here, but it really it looks
Speaker 3: to me like a goof on the filmmaker's part. But anyway,
Speaker 3: either way, Saxton is here the train station looking to
Speaker 3: transport his grade find back to Europe by way of
Speaker 3: the Trans Siberian Railroad. And here's where we get to
Speaker 3: the drama about Saxton having booked passage on this tra
Speaker 3: weeks in advance, but when he arrives, the station master
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, sorry, nothing, Yeah, I don't have any
Speaker 3: record of this, and so he's supposed to be paying
Speaker 3: a bribe. But eventually he just kind of muscles his
Speaker 3: way onto the train by throwing the station masters all
Speaker 3: the contents of his desk on the floor. I think
Speaker 3: he also gets some backup because some British soldiers arrive
Speaker 3: and they're like, station master, do what Christopher Lee says,
Speaker 3: and they're like, okay, I will. Anyway. Here at the
Speaker 3: train station, Saxton runs into a couple of other characters.
Speaker 3: We meet another scientist. I think he's supposed to be
Speaker 3: a friendly professional rival, but either way, he's known to
Speaker 3: Saxton and his name is doctor Wells. This is the
Speaker 3: character played by Peter Cushing. Did you interpret him as
Speaker 3: a professional rival, like they sort of know each other,
Speaker 3: but they're working at odds against one another in a way.
Speaker 1: Yes, we don't really learn a lot regarding Wells's activities,
Speaker 1: like why exactly he's out this far, and he seems
Speaker 1: reluctant to really engage in his profession. Like, there's a
Speaker 1: great scene earlier where they're like, doctor, we need you,
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, can I wait till I finish
Speaker 1: my meal? You know, he's not eager to get to work.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm just gonna enjoy this train ride.
Speaker 3: They're clearly both members of the Royal Society, because Wells
Speaker 3: is very curious about what Saxton has discovered and Saxton
Speaker 3: is like, you will find out about it when I
Speaker 3: present to the Royal Society.
Speaker 1: I guess there is some evidence there for if they're
Speaker 1: not rivals. He's very curious, to the point of paying
Speaker 1: somebody to mess with the crate. Yeah, so not quite
Speaker 1: sabotage his work, but like, if you need to remove
Speaker 1: some screws on this great, if you need to drill
Speaker 1: a few holes and it, go for it. You know,
Speaker 1: here's a twenty.
Speaker 3: Yes, but within the context of this plot, once again,
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee's character is very rigid and brittle and serious,
Speaker 3: and doctor Wells is a little more He goes with
Speaker 3: the flow. Yeah. Also, we meet doctor Wells a bacteriologist
Speaker 3: named Miss Jones played by Alice Reinhardt, and I love her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her She lived nineteen ten
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety three, and this was one of her
Speaker 1: last films, but it came off a lot of TV
Speaker 1: and radio work. I think she was like a staple
Speaker 1: in TV soap operas for a very long time. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: radio soap operas, but possibly TV soap operas as well,
Speaker 1: but definitely radio soap operas.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, well, yeah, I like her. She makes it.
Speaker 3: She makes like some cheeky jokes. Yeah, and well you
Speaker 3: know so Wells describes Saxton to Miss Jones by saying
Speaker 3: he dabbles in fossils and bones, so I think a
Speaker 3: little bit of ribbing there, no pun intended. But anyway,
Speaker 3: they're going to be aboard the train where Saxton is
Speaker 3: looking to get a spot. Now, as the two scientists
Speaker 3: are catching up out on the platform, Saxton's crate is
Speaker 3: waiting to be loaded in with the rest of the freight,
Speaker 3: and a thief comes along. A thief in a very
Speaker 3: well dressed thief in like a brand new hat comes
Speaker 3: along and picks the lock on the box or on
Speaker 3: the chains holding the box shut. He wants to get
Speaker 3: what's inside. But shock, when we cut back to the
Speaker 3: crate a few Moments later, a local man finds there's
Speaker 3: like a body sprawled out on the ground on the platform,
Speaker 3: and the local man pulls the sheet from over the
Speaker 3: body and reveals that it is a dead man. It
Speaker 3: is the thief, and he's dead and only the whites
Speaker 3: of his eyes are showing pure white. Also, the viewing
Speaker 3: slot on the crate is hanging mysteriously open.
Speaker 1: It's a shame that this nameless thief played here by
Speaker 1: Hiroshi Kitatawa, he is really the only Asian character in
Speaker 1: the film, despite a clear Asian setting and numerous background
Speaker 1: Asian characters throughout the picture. So I would say missed
Speaker 1: opportunity here.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. So the thief is lying dead on the ground,
Speaker 3: and then a strange monk comes out of nowhere or
Speaker 3: actually so, I don't know exactly battle the offices and
Speaker 3: hierarchies of the Russian Orthodox Church, But I don't know.
Speaker 3: But I think this guy is presented as a monk,
Speaker 3: but people are also calling him father, which in my knowledge,
Speaker 3: which would mostly come from Catholicism, I think would be
Speaker 3: a priest, not a monk. I think a monk would
Speaker 3: be brother. But I don't know. Maybe I don't know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about there. Anyway, they call somebody calls
Speaker 3: him a monk, but he's also called father. He is
Speaker 3: some kind of religious official. He's in all black. He
Speaker 3: kneels next to the thief's body and he begins to chant.
Speaker 3: And this is father Pujardov. Again. He has notes of rasputant, tangled, greasy,
Speaker 3: black beard, haunted eyes. I think they put like dark
Speaker 3: makeup under his eyes to make him look look kind
Speaker 3: of unwell in some way. He looks like a man
Speaker 3: who has obsessions and who is maybe just like not
Speaker 3: doing so hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of a lot of worm telling
Speaker 1: energy to this character. Again, I love him anytime he's
Speaker 1: on the screen.
Speaker 3: Now we meet another character as well. This is Inspector Mirov,
Speaker 3: who is a guy who has sideburns connecting to a
Speaker 3: mustache with no beard, so that's a good look. He
Speaker 3: arrives on the platform and says that he knew the
Speaker 3: dead man. He was a locksmith who operated as a
Speaker 3: thief on the side. Or he calls him a locksmith.
Speaker 3: I don't know if maybe that just means like he's
Speaker 3: a thief who was good at picking locks. But anyway,
Speaker 3: he says that he could open any lock with a hairpin.
Speaker 3: And then father Poujardov says, but wait a minute, how
Speaker 3: could this guy be a thief because he is blind?
Speaker 3: And they show his face again referring to the all
Speaker 3: white eyes, and Inspector Mirov is shocked to see this
Speaker 3: and he says, like my God, implying he was not
Speaker 3: like this before. So he previously known to this policeman,
Speaker 3: but was not always like this. So something has happened
Speaker 3: to him, and Poujardov starts to get really amped up here.
Speaker 3: He says that it's the work of the devil, and
Speaker 3: then he turns his attention to the crate, runs over
Speaker 3: to the crate, starts shaking it to pry it open,
Speaker 3: but he is interrupted by Saxton. So Christopher Lee comes
Speaker 3: out wearing this tall black what do you call this
Speaker 3: kind of hat? I don't know, It's like the sort
Speaker 3: of cylindrical black Russian hat, and he says, can I
Speaker 3: be of any assistance father, and Poujardov says, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever you've got in this crate here is unholy and
Speaker 3: it must be destroyed. And Saxton explains to Inspector Mirov
Speaker 3: that the death could not have been caused by the
Speaker 3: contents of the crate because the crate contains only fossils.
Speaker 3: And here is where we get the explanation. Mirov is like,
Speaker 3: what is a fossil? I've never heard of that, and
Speaker 3: Saxton explains that a fossil is a stone. Now, for
Speaker 3: some reason, Poojardov is not calmed by this. He's like stones.
Speaker 3: And then we get a chiming of an ominous bell,
Speaker 3: which at first I thought was on the soundtrack, but
Speaker 3: I think it's actually the train. It's a you know,
Speaker 3: diegetic sound effect of the train. And then Father Poojardov
Speaker 3: goes on to explain, quote, where there is God, there
Speaker 3: is always a place for the cross, even on this
Speaker 3: stone floor. Just so. So he pulls out a piece
Speaker 3: of chalk and he draws across on the train platform
Speaker 3: and then he says, but Satan is evil, and where
Speaker 3: there is evil, there is no place for the cross.
Speaker 3: And then he tries to draw across on the canvas
Speaker 3: on the side of the crate, and the chalk won't
Speaker 3: leave a mark. I have questions about this. Does chalk
Speaker 3: normally draw well on canvas?
Speaker 1: Ah, this is ludicrous, you know, it's like this seems
Speaker 1: like a place for something that's a little more ambiguous,
Speaker 1: Like birds will not light on this crate, which means
Speaker 1: there's something un holy in it, or you know, a
Speaker 1: common thing is, oh, well, cats hiss at it, dogs
Speaker 1: bark at it, that sort of thing. But you can't
Speaker 1: draw on it with chalk. It's a little harder to buy.
Speaker 1: Like you probably can, and if you can't, the answer
Speaker 1: is entirely material. It's not based on like holiness.
Speaker 3: Well, it's even more than that. So it's not just
Speaker 3: that you can't draw on it, it's that you can't
Speaker 3: draw across.
Speaker 1: So you should be able to at least start the
Speaker 1: cross and finish it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should be able to draw like one line,
Speaker 3: but I don't know, the second line wouldn't work or something.
Speaker 3: Satan will tolerate a line, but if you draw.
Speaker 1: The cross upside down, Satan's okay with it. But then
Speaker 1: you flip the crate.
Speaker 3: What happens. Satan must know that you're planning on drawing
Speaker 3: a cross before you start, and that's why he won't
Speaker 3: even let you get the one line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at any rate, this is how it goes down.
Speaker 1: And and of course the non religious types present don't
Speaker 1: buy it. They're like, this is some sort of a
Speaker 1: trick or whatever exactly.
Speaker 3: Saxton says, rubbish, a conjumer's trick. Anyway, they take the
Speaker 3: body of the locksmith away. They load the fossil crate
Speaker 3: into the train and the baggage car. Somewhere in here,
Speaker 3: there's a moment where Saxton and Wells are standing next
Speaker 3: to the crate, and the crate kind of groans, and
Speaker 3: then Saxton checks inside but nothing seems amiss. But Wells
Speaker 3: has questions. He's like, you know, oh, I want to
Speaker 3: know you know what's in the crate. And Saxton isn't
Speaker 3: going to tell him anything. He's like, you can read
Speaker 3: about it in the Society's annual report. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just a fossil. But Wells is not buying it. He's like,
Speaker 3: you've heard it's making sounds there is something alive in there,
Speaker 3: and Saxton is like, nope, nope, nothing alive in there.
Speaker 3: And there's some joke that really I think does not
Speaker 3: land very well. Wells says, you won't need to feed
Speaker 3: it then, and Saxton says, the occupant hasn't eaten in
Speaker 3: two million years, and Wells says, that's one way to
Speaker 3: economize on food bills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have. There are a few gags thrown in
Speaker 1: here at times between these two, and sometimes they land,
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't.
Speaker 3: I feel like that one could have used another few
Speaker 3: minutes in the writer's room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a good one coming up.
Speaker 3: Now. As the train leaves the station for the Trans
Speaker 3: Siberian Railroad, we start to meet more of the characters.
Speaker 3: We meet the character of Countess Irena. This is Sylvia Tortosa.
Speaker 3: She comes into the baggage car with a dog in
Speaker 3: her arms, and so, I don't know how you interpreted this.
Speaker 3: The dog is supposed to be freaking out because it
Speaker 3: doesn't like whatever's in the crate. But it looked to
Speaker 3: me like this dog was just not into filming this scene.
Speaker 3: It's like squirming, trying to get out of her arms.
Speaker 3: It does not want to be in this movie.
Speaker 1: So maybe they didn't go with an actor dog. They
Speaker 1: went with just somebody's untrained pet.
Speaker 3: They got what they could get anyway. The Countess is
Speaker 3: here to drop off a valuable parcel to be stored
Speaker 3: in the safe in the baggage car. She hands it
Speaker 3: off to the baggage man, but she also gets to
Speaker 3: meet English heroes. So her intro is to come up
Speaker 3: to Christopher Lee and she's like, Alinka is afraid of
Speaker 3: whatever you have in that crate. The dog's name is
Speaker 3: a Linka, and he responds, there's nothing in this crate
Speaker 3: that would interest a Linka, And then the conversation gets weird.
Speaker 3: The Countess says, normally she likes englishmen. All we polls
Speaker 3: do Oh yes, England Queen Victoria crumpets Shakespeare. Okay, Saxton says,
Speaker 3: I admire poland Madam, I believe there is a bond
Speaker 3: between our two countries. And then the Countess says, my husband,
Speaker 3: the count Petrowsky says that in the fifteenth century, your
Speaker 3: king Henry betrayed us to the Russians. Hmmm, and Saxton's like, well,
Speaker 3: I apologize, And the whole time the dog is going nuts. Eventually,
Speaker 3: Saxton and the Countess leave to go back to the
Speaker 3: passenger carriage. He escorts her back to her car, but
Speaker 3: on the way we get to meet another character. He
Speaker 3: actually says, I think that he's an engineer, but he
Speaker 3: is our scientist character. This is Yev to Tushinko and
Speaker 3: Saxton stops along the way and leans into his compartment
Speaker 3: because he I don't know. I think he's dropped something
Speaker 3: or oh yeah, it's a chess piece or something like that. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: well wait is it a chess piece or is it
Speaker 3: a piece of chalk? Because the scene involves a piece
Speaker 3: of chalk.
Speaker 1: This is so he is furiously playing chess with himself
Speaker 1: the whole time we see him pretty much, but this
Speaker 1: scene he does have the piece of chalk because he's
Speaker 1: like the piece of chalk that would not write on
Speaker 1: the grate. I collected it and I analyzed it, and
Speaker 1: it is just normal chalk bump bump bum.
Speaker 3: Right. I am an engineer, a scientist, and this is
Speaker 3: ordinary chalk. But I don't know how do you determine that?
Speaker 3: Are you a specialist in chalk? I'm a. I'm a
Speaker 3: I have a degree in chalk studies, I guess.
Speaker 1: Or then it also raises the question it's like, like
Speaker 1: you could never just use mundane chalk to pull off
Speaker 1: some sort of a scam or a trick.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, that's right, So you have two SHANKO
Speaker 3: is like, because I'm a scientist, I can verify that
Speaker 3: this should have written on the canvas on the side
Speaker 3: of the crate. Why did it not write on the crate?
Speaker 3: And Saxton says, hypnosis, yoga. These mystics can be terribly convincing.
Speaker 3: They can even hypnotize themselves. It doesn't seem like an answer.
Speaker 1: The power of yoga can can definitely keep you from
Speaker 1: marking on things with chalk.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Cushing is back in the baggage car and this
Speaker 3: is where he's offering a bribe to the baggage man
Speaker 3: to drill a hole in Saxon's box and take a
Speaker 3: look at what's inside. Wells is really interested in this,
Speaker 3: He really wants to know. Later, we meet another character.
Speaker 3: We meet Helga Line as Natasha. She is in the
Speaker 3: compartment with Wells and she's like, I'm in trouble. I
Speaker 3: have to get out of Shanghai, but I don't have
Speaker 3: a ticket. I need to stay in your compartment. Oh
Speaker 3: and for some reason, also, Wells and Saxton are bunk
Speaker 3: mates on the train. It's sort of an odd couple thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are parents. All three of them are staying
Speaker 1: in this this one cabin somehow. Yes, so they're making
Speaker 1: it work, you know, But but I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: everybody's sleeping.
Speaker 3: Here anyway, This is all working up to the very
Speaker 3: first murder on board the train. So we did have
Speaker 3: one murder at the station, but now something is on
Speaker 3: the train itself. So the baggage man, this is the
Speaker 3: bald guy with the tremendous mutton chops. He has been
Speaker 3: paid off by Wells to peek inside Saxton's crate and
Speaker 3: see what's in there. So in the night he drills
Speaker 3: a hole in the wood and he peeps in to
Speaker 3: see what's inside, and then he steps away for a minute.
Speaker 3: And while he has stepped away, we see a hairy
Speaker 3: fossil hand reaching out from the crate and ooh, it's
Speaker 3: a good it's a good hand. I was thinking of
Speaker 3: it as a werewolf hand. I know the creature is
Speaker 3: not a werewolf, but we see a lot of it's
Speaker 3: body without seeing its face in the movie, and every
Speaker 3: time you see its hand or something, it's where wolf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it Like it's technically supposed to be
Speaker 1: some sort of an ape creature. I guess, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't like straight up look like an ape creature.
Speaker 3: It's really is.
Speaker 1: If we see more and more of it, I think
Speaker 1: it's a pretty quality monster costume. It like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: read just undead gorilla. It doesn't read where wolf. It
Speaker 1: feels unique unto itself.
Speaker 3: Sort of red eyed skeleton yetty. Yeah, anyway, what does
Speaker 3: this wolf hand do? Well, it reaches out of out
Speaker 3: of the hole in the crate and it feels around
Speaker 3: in its environment, and it finds a nail, and it
Speaker 3: picks up the nail and it bends the tip of
Speaker 3: the nail and then inserts the tip of the nail
Speaker 3: into the lock, the padlock on the chains around the
Speaker 3: crate and picks the lock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is it seems pretty astounding at this point.
Speaker 1: Usually you don't think about your crate being capable of
Speaker 1: creating an impromptu lock pick and dealing with a mechanism
Speaker 1: like this. Certainly the Great Dweller in Stephen King's Creep
Speaker 1: Show wouldn't have pulled this off, that's right. But it'll
Speaker 1: all make sense as we proceed, That's right.
Speaker 3: This creature has powers that the crate dweller does not.
Speaker 3: So the baggage Man returns, and when he does, we
Speaker 3: get our first image of what happens. What the creature
Speaker 3: in this movie does to people. It is the eye
Speaker 3: beam lock. Wait, I guess that's kind of confusing, because
Speaker 3: an I beam is actually something used in construction. But
Speaker 3: what can we describe what it does? It looks out
Speaker 3: with red eyes into the eyes of its victim, and
Speaker 3: a type of fatal hypnosis begins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with I think a single red eye, like it
Speaker 1: only has one functional eyeball anymore, but it glows red
Speaker 1: and it instantly captivates you and then has a fatal
Speaker 1: effect on you, leaving you with like like boiled egg,
Speaker 1: white eyes, blood coming out of your pores and your face,
Speaker 1: and you are of course dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, pingpong ball eyes, blood coming out of
Speaker 3: the eyes, blood coming out of the nose, dead on
Speaker 3: the floor. And what happens after that, who knows. So anyway,
Speaker 3: elsewhere on the train, we go to the private car
Speaker 3: of Countess Irena, father Poojardov, and a new character, Count Petrovski,
Speaker 3: IRENA's husband. So it's a luxurious first class cabin with
Speaker 3: fancy furniture, drapes, embroidered drapes and so forth, and Poujardov
Speaker 3: is like, there's a stink of hell on this train.
Speaker 3: Even the dog knows it. And the Count and the
Speaker 3: Countess are discussing what dress the Countess should wear to
Speaker 3: best manipulate the Englishman, and Pujardov disapproves of this conversation.
Speaker 3: He's like, you're making a mockery, you're jesting with her
Speaker 3: immortal soul. And the Count says, that's why we keep you, Pujardov.
Speaker 3: Souls are your concerns. So they're outsourcing holiness. And then
Speaker 3: after he has chastened father, Poojardov says, forgive me, your
Speaker 3: excellency and my concern for the spiritual welfare of the countess.
Speaker 3: I forgot myself. I will pray for humility, and the
Speaker 3: Count says, pray hard, poojar Dov, or you will find
Speaker 3: yourself praying for a job too. So Poojardov, you know
Speaker 3: he fancies himself this this unshakable principled man of God,
Speaker 3: But really he's a he's a craven worshiper of power
Speaker 3: and he wants that paycheck.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love how he's like, you know, or or
Speaker 1: else you'll find yourself praying for a job. But you
Speaker 1: know what, Pujardov is already shopping around. He's been updating
Speaker 1: his spiritual LinkedIn profile, he's ready to go.
Speaker 3: Oh. Also in the scene, it's notable that they the
Speaker 3: characters in this carriage, they hear the repeatedly whistled melody,
Speaker 3: you know, the melody that we heard in the opening credits,
Speaker 3: and the countess tries to like play along on the piano.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have no idea how I was to interpret that.
Speaker 1: Is this is the fossil beast whistling somewhere on the train,
Speaker 1: and they're overhearing it. I'm not sure, but still it's
Speaker 1: such a great little creepy ditty. I'm happy to hear
Speaker 1: it every time they play it.
Speaker 3: Anyway. There is a confrontation after the baggage man goes missing.
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov is sort of the police presence for this
Speaker 3: portion of the film, and he questions Saxton on the crate.
Speaker 3: He's like, what exactly have you got in that crate?
Speaker 3: I need you to open it, And at one point
Speaker 3: he has his soldiers threaten threatened, Saxton say give me
Speaker 3: the key to the padlock or you know, or else
Speaker 3: I guess we're going to hit you with the butt
Speaker 3: of this gun. And Saxton is very brittle as usual.
Speaker 3: He's like no, and he throws the key out the
Speaker 3: window of the moving train. That's how protective he is
Speaker 3: of his quote fossil. But they get it open anyway.
Speaker 3: I think they just get a guy with an axe
Speaker 3: to this is I remember one of the least convincing
Speaker 3: looking effects shots in the movie is the guy using
Speaker 3: the axe to open the crate because he's just kind
Speaker 3: of going. But they get it open, and what do
Speaker 3: they find inside? Is it the fossil No, it is
Speaker 3: the baggage man with the hard boiled egg eyes and
Speaker 3: the blood running down his face. And thus the murder
Speaker 3: mystery begins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only did the fossil beasts pick the lock
Speaker 1: and climb out, but killed the man, put him back
Speaker 1: in in his place inside the crate, and then locked
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 3: Okay, from here on I think we should we should
Speaker 3: go in a little bit less seen by scene detail
Speaker 3: and instead talk in some of the broad strokes. But
Speaker 3: there is a lot of good stuff left to discuss.
Speaker 3: One of the things is, oh, you remember there's this
Speaker 3: There's this great scene where some of the scientific themes
Speaker 3: of the movie are articulated. So the Countess comes to
Speaker 3: visit Professor Saxton in his room. While they're all dining,
Speaker 3: you know. So there's a shot in the dining car
Speaker 3: where Professor Wells and I believe Natasha are having dinner
Speaker 3: and Wells ends up seeing a boiled fish and its
Speaker 3: eyeball is entirely white, and he's like, look, the eyeball
Speaker 3: is white, and yet yet Vushenko or oh yev Tushenko
Speaker 3: I think is his name, he's there and he's like, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: of course it's white. It's a boiled fish. And this
Speaker 3: is a reveal for some reason. But we also get
Speaker 3: the scene with Saxton and the Countess in his compartment
Speaker 3: where he's dining alone and she joins him, and she
Speaker 3: asks him about what it was in the crate, the
Speaker 3: importance of this fossil, and he says, well, this fossil
Speaker 3: is very important. It could change our entire understanding of
Speaker 3: science because it could prove correct the theory of evolution.
Speaker 3: And she's like, oh, no, evolution, that's immoral.
Speaker 1: Yes, like sounds evil or something like yeah. It's like
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: But I think that's how we're supposed to understand Professor Saxton.
Speaker 3: He's just very much devoted to the advancement of science
Speaker 3: and knowledge, to the point that you know, if murders happen,
Speaker 3: that's just none of my Eventually there are some more murders,
Speaker 3: and we get more scenes of characters becoming isolated, and
Speaker 3: when they get isolated, something comes up behind them and
Speaker 3: looks at them with red eyes, and then they too
Speaker 3: are left with the hard boiled egg eyes and the
Speaker 3: blood running out of them and are eventually discovered. So
Speaker 3: there are multiple deaths by red eye hypnosis, eventually leading
Speaker 3: up to a scene where there's sort of a false
Speaker 3: resolution of the conflict because there is a scene where
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov catches the fossil creature, the sort of prehistoric
Speaker 3: ape creature with the red eye, in the act of
Speaker 3: doing a murder, and then shoots it and it seems
Speaker 3: to fall down dead. So movie's over right.
Speaker 1: So at this point, as we've just got we've had
Speaker 1: bodies piling up, and then we also get the creature
Speaker 1: itself seemingly dead. They have to have some autopsies. We
Speaker 1: have like numerous autopsy scenes in this film, and they're
Speaker 1: all pretty great that they're nice and gory and feel
Speaker 1: you feel like they're actually cutting into something. You know
Speaker 1: that the lighting's really nice, but we get some weird
Speaker 1: take homes from these autopsies and necropsies.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, do we ever. So yeah, there are a
Speaker 3: couple of different autopsies that reveal different things. One of
Speaker 3: them is the dissection of the victims of the prehistoric
Speaker 3: ape creature. So you know, they're looking at him like, wow,
Speaker 3: the eyes are all messed up. But then for some reason,
Speaker 3: doctor Wells is like, well, let's just saw this cranium
Speaker 3: open and get a look at that brain. I want
Speaker 3: to see the brain. So, you know, they cut the
Speaker 3: head open and they look at the brain and what
Speaker 3: do you know, there is not a wrinkle on it.
Speaker 3: There's a line involving one of my least favorite cliches
Speaker 3: in the English language. Miss Jones is looking at the
Speaker 3: dead guy's brain and she goes, smooth is a baby's bottom.
Speaker 3: And they show it and you know what, it's exactly right, wrinkles.
Speaker 3: The brain just looks like it's like a butt. It's
Speaker 3: like a you know, it's got the lone the hemisphere
Speaker 3: line down the middle, but it's like two butt cheeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whatever this creature is doing to people, it is completely
Speaker 1: smoothing out their brain. Yeah, and turning it into just
Speaker 1: a big mass of smoothed out silly putty.
Speaker 3: Now these scientists in the movie begin to explain what's
Speaker 3: going on there. They're like, well, you know, all the
Speaker 3: wrinkles in the brain represent all of your knowledge and memories.
Speaker 3: So if this creature is stealing the wrinkles out of
Speaker 3: people's brains and leaving the brain smooth as a baby's bottom,
Speaker 3: that means it is stealing all of their memories. So
Speaker 3: by killing them, it gains all of their knowledge.
Speaker 1: Okay, so at this point we can safely reveal that
Speaker 1: whatever this creature is, it keeps absorbing people's memories, absorbing
Speaker 1: their minds and moving forward through the train through the
Speaker 1: plot with enhanced mental capabilities.
Speaker 3: That's right, And so it knows things like remember when
Speaker 3: we saw it bend to the nail and know how
Speaker 3: to pick a lock. One of the people it had
Speaker 3: already killed was the lock picker. Yeah, and so who
Speaker 3: all has it killed at this point? Wow, it really
Speaker 3: starts to get all kinds of knowledge. I think it
Speaker 3: gets the knowledge of because it kills Hellga Lina and
Speaker 3: she is revealed to be a spy, Is that right?
Speaker 1: It had or a jewel thief, a jewel thief and
Speaker 1: or a spy. Okay, but because I think it gets
Speaker 1: her while she's stealing some jewels that are locked up
Speaker 1: in a safe.
Speaker 3: So it gets her kind of knowledge as a spy
Speaker 3: or a thief. It already has some thief knowledge about
Speaker 3: picking locks. It has the knowledge of the baggage man,
Speaker 3: which I guess is knowledge about like how the train
Speaker 3: works and everything. So it's just becoming more and more
Speaker 3: intellectually powerful as as it piles up victims.
Speaker 1: Until it's shot and seemingly killed dead.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right. But once the ape creature is shot,
Speaker 3: they oh my god. Then begins another different type of
Speaker 3: body dissection, which is even better than the last one.
Speaker 3: So last time we learned about butt cheek brains. This
Speaker 3: time we're going to learn about how eyes work and
Speaker 3: the way eyes work. In this movie. This is science
Speaker 3: is that if you stick a needle into an eyeball
Speaker 3: and extract some of the liquid inside it. I think
Speaker 3: in reality that's called aqueous humor or vitreous humor. The
Speaker 3: humor is inside the eyeball. You extract some of that
Speaker 3: in a needle, You squirt it out on a plate,
Speaker 3: and you put it under a magnifying glass, you can
Speaker 3: look into the liquid and see. At first, they say
Speaker 3: the last thing that the dead person saw before they died.
Speaker 3: And this actually does correspond to a pseudoscientific belief that
Speaker 3: people used to have what's this called retinal optography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is something I remember discussing this with
Speaker 1: Christian at one point back on an older episode of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, And yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: idea that you could that you could, as a forensic
Speaker 1: technique look at a person's eye and get an image
Speaker 1: of the last thing they saw. And so it ended
Speaker 1: up it was like cutting edge forensic info that was
Speaker 1: used in a lot of fiction of the time period
Speaker 1: of late nineteenth early twentieth century. So you know, by
Speaker 1: the time this movie is is written and produced, it
Speaker 1: is very outdated and it's definitely been debunked. So it's
Speaker 1: but it is also kind of an interesting curio to
Speaker 1: throw in. It is always really stood out as just
Speaker 1: another like ludicrous aspect of this plot, along with the
Speaker 1: discussions of what is and isn't a fossil and so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, well, no, it gets weirder because so I think
Speaker 3: the idea of that is you would look at the retina.
Speaker 3: You would like project through the retina and look on it,
Speaker 3: and you'd be able to see the last thing the
Speaker 3: person saw when they died, which is not correct. But
Speaker 3: this is like their distracting little droplets of liquid from
Speaker 3: inside the eye.
Speaker 1: Right, they take it one step beyond. Like initially they
Speaker 1: pull up an image of the inspector shooting the monster. Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, within the confines of the fiction of optography,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But then they pull out an image
Speaker 1: of a dinosaur and they're looking at it on the microscope.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, this creature existed in the time of dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: because here is clear medical evidence that it once saw
Speaker 1: a brontosaurus in the wild.
Speaker 3: Right, it's looking at an Encyclopedia illustration from nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven of a brontosaurus yeap, and it's just beautiful. This
Speaker 3: might have been my favorite moment of the whole movie
Speaker 3: when they got to the dinosaur. Yes. Oh, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't stop at the dinosaur because they're like, okay, so
Speaker 3: this thing was alive at the same time as dinosaurs,
Speaker 3: which is not true of any hominid human ancestor you know, mammals.
Speaker 3: At the time. There were no hominids. Yet then it
Speaker 3: gets weirder because they're like, Okay, what's the next thing
Speaker 3: we can extract. They pull some more jelly out and
Speaker 3: they put it on another plate and they're looking at
Speaker 3: it and they're like, what's that. Oh, it's not a map.
Speaker 3: This is a picture of the Earth as seen from space.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was actually I think this is a good scientific question.
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer right now. Maybe we can
Speaker 3: come back to this in listener mail or something. I
Speaker 3: was like, would somebody at the supposed time of this
Speaker 3: movie be able to recognize a picture of Earth from space?
Speaker 3: Obviously they never had a photograph of Earths from space,
Speaker 3: But would they have enough sort of ability to simulate
Speaker 3: what that would look like that they would recognize a
Speaker 3: real image of it?
Speaker 1: Well, especially if the imagery is lo fi, as seems
Speaker 1: to be the case here. Yeah, it seems like there
Speaker 1: maybe would be more room to misinterpret it as something else.
Speaker 3: But they immediately know what it is. They're like, this
Speaker 3: is the Earth from space, which means bomb, bomb bomb.
Speaker 3: This creature is not only from the time of the
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and able to absorb people's memories through its eyes,
Speaker 3: it also is an alien from outer space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the point where it's worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that some people say, well, this is obviously drawing a
Speaker 1: bit on the nineteen thirty eight sci fi horror novella
Speaker 1: by John W. Campbell, Who Goes There, which of course
Speaker 1: was the basis for the Thing from Another World John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's The Thing and so forth right, And you know,
Speaker 1: there are some parallels there. I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent they you know, actually directly based the plot of
Speaker 1: this film on Who Goes There, but you know, undeniable similarities.
Speaker 3: So we are learning all this, but roughly the same time,
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie, you think that the
Speaker 3: monster has been killed, but strangely, we're seeing some kind
Speaker 3: of other creature whose face is not revealed, sneaking around
Speaker 3: on the train with another werewolf hand. It's got the claws,
Speaker 3: it's got the fingers. What's going on here, Well, it
Speaker 3: seems that the creature has created a copy of itself
Speaker 3: through sort of backwards eyeball hypnosis, so it can it
Speaker 3: can steal other people's minds by staring into their eyes,
Speaker 3: but we learn it can also transmit its own soul
Speaker 3: with all of its memories out of its eyes so
Speaker 3: it can upload or download into somebody else's brain, and
Speaker 3: it has done that with Inspector Mirra bumb bumb boom,
Speaker 3: yet another twist.
Speaker 1: It makes sense though, because like the missing Link was
Speaker 1: not its original form, it's just a form it occupied,
Speaker 1: and now it has a new host. But the whole
Speaker 1: monster hand, like now Mirav has the monster hand. And
Speaker 1: when I first saw that in my recent rewatch of it,
Speaker 1: I was like, did I miss something? How did has
Speaker 1: he get the monster hand on his body? There's no
Speaker 1: explanation for that, as I recall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. It just kind of grows that way
Speaker 3: once you transfer the soul through the eyes, I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the results. It's a great monster
Speaker 1: hand and it adds to the creepiness of the host
Speaker 1: character here. But I never understood why this was supposed
Speaker 1: to happen. It doesn't seem to happen in subsequent transfers,
Speaker 1: just this one.
Speaker 3: Now, It's interesting that in this section of the movie,
Speaker 3: Mirov becomes a little bit while the monster is in Mirov.
Speaker 3: You get a little bit of sympathy for the monster
Speaker 3: because Mirov like goes to you have to Shenko the
Speaker 3: scientist and he's like, hey, you're a scientist, right, you
Speaker 3: know things about gravity, right? Do you know of any
Speaker 3: way to escape Earth's gravity? Yeah, which would be kind
Speaker 3: of a strange question coming from just a Russian imperial investigator.
Speaker 3: But the scientist is like, oh, yes, actually, my mentor
Speaker 3: was the inventor of rockets. We can discuss rockets, and
Speaker 3: Mirovs like, no need to discuss, and then he hypnotodes
Speaker 3: him in the eye, kills him, steals all of his
Speaker 3: rocket knowledge. So this this creature just wants to get home.
Speaker 3: I think it wants to build a rocket and escape Earth.
Speaker 1: I think the other interesting thing to look at with
Speaker 1: this character, the being from another world here is that
Speaker 1: as it absorbs information from each victim, that alters its
Speaker 1: identity to some extent. And so in a way, by
Speaker 1: absorbing rational characters and even you know, characters with not
Speaker 1: only rationable but maybe you know, you know other sensibilities,
Speaker 1: these end up changing its own cognitive state. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it is more relatable at this point because
Speaker 1: of who it is killed and absorbed. But if it
Speaker 1: makes some missteps in who it kills and absorbs, well
Speaker 1: things could change. And we do see that change coming up.
Speaker 3: That's right. So all this middle of the movie intrigue
Speaker 3: goes on for a while, there are more more murders,
Speaker 3: more plotting by the being in the guise of Mirov.
Speaker 3: But eventually a big sort of shift occurs because the
Speaker 3: train is stopped along the way and the authority is
Speaker 3: intervene and that authority is in the form of Tellisavalis.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, I gotta be honest, I don't even remember what
Speaker 3: Tellisivalis's goal is when he gets on the train. I
Speaker 3: think he's just like, something is going wrong on the
Speaker 3: train and he's intervening for some reason. But he shows
Speaker 3: up and just starts barking orders at everybody. He's like,
Speaker 3: everyone on this train is under arrest. You're all under arrest.
Speaker 1: Basically, he's a drunken regional tyrant. Yes, and he is
Speaker 1: totally going to enact his will on the train. And
Speaker 1: his whole thing is like, you've got some sort of
Speaker 1: murders going on here, Well, I think we just need
Speaker 1: to apply beatings to everybody until we get the truth. Yes,
Speaker 1: And he's just into the beatings as he is into
Speaker 1: finding the truth, if not more into the beatings again,
Speaker 1: regional tyrant and it is endangering everything.
Speaker 3: There's also a whole subplot here where, like I think
Speaker 3: the count is trying to transport some special kind of steel.
Speaker 3: There's like a like a technology spy caper going on.
Speaker 3: You remember this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems a little much for the duration of
Speaker 1: the picture to have this as an added B or
Speaker 1: C plot, but okay, we have it.
Speaker 3: That's I think that's just yet another thing that the
Speaker 3: alien kills somebody to absorb. He's like, tell me about
Speaker 3: this steel hypnotad And then eventually what happens, though, is
Speaker 3: that Telly savalis, after giving this great monologue scene where
Speaker 3: he's just bullying everybody around on the train, there is
Speaker 3: a violent confrontation and he mortally wounds Mirov. He and
Speaker 3: his men do and so what's going to happen? Oh,
Speaker 3: the creature is trapped in there. Well, meanwhile, we've seen
Speaker 3: some developments in Father Pooh Jardov, who is I don't know,
Speaker 3: not quite so committed to the Christian God anymore.
Speaker 1: He sees clear evidence that the Inspector is possessed and
Speaker 1: he believes it to be Satan. He's like, like, Satan,
Speaker 1: let me serve.
Speaker 3: You yeah, it's like Satan. Satan is where it's at.
Speaker 3: You know. He's if you can't be with the one
Speaker 3: you love, love the one you're with, and Satan. So
Speaker 3: he thinks it's Satan, and he's like, Satan, come in
Speaker 3: to me, come in to me. And so the Satan does.
Speaker 1: Can't remember if he actually explains this, but it maybe
Speaker 1: becomes a little clear that I'm not actually Satan. I'm
Speaker 1: an alien from another world who's been trapped in life
Speaker 1: forms throughout Earth's history. Good enough, Yeah, Pittorda's like works
Speaker 1: for me, bro let's do it. But he's he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like, come into me, and he's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want you. There's nothing in your mind I need, which
Speaker 1: is you know him kind of you know, as a slam.
Speaker 1: But it's also it implies, like it knows that if
Speaker 1: I absorb this man's consciousness and thoughts, it is going
Speaker 1: to perhaps be a detriment to my mission and my
Speaker 1: attempt to escape here, because this is an unhinged individual
Speaker 1: with a lot of dangerous ideas and values his head.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so I love this relationship. Actually, it's funny
Speaker 3: and it's weird and all that. But he does end
Speaker 3: up going into the body of the monk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this leads into our big showdown where a
Speaker 1: number of things are happening at once. There's the raising
Speaker 1: of the dead, like all the people that have been
Speaker 1: killed thus far are brought back as red eyed zombies.
Speaker 1: There's an attempt to get the survivors into the baggage
Speaker 1: car and then detach it because at the same time,
Speaker 1: the authorities have received a signal that oh, well, we
Speaker 1: need to send this train off the side of a
Speaker 1: cliff because there's something terrible on it, and they're like,
Speaker 1: why would we have to do that, I mean, it
Speaker 1: must be something related to war, so we got to
Speaker 1: do it. So a number of things here are coming
Speaker 1: to a head. And we also get a big final
Speaker 1: showdown between Christopher Lee's character Saxton and the the alien
Speaker 1: that is possessing now Father Pujarativ's body, and we get
Speaker 1: some nice discussion about their goals.
Speaker 3: I think the alien tries to tempt Saxton into helping
Speaker 3: it by offering him knowledge, you know. Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is what Saxton was saying earlier on. Saxton was like,
Speaker 3: I don't really care about the people who have died.
Speaker 3: I only care about advancing scientific knowledge, and then what
Speaker 3: do you know at the end of the aliens, like, look,
Speaker 3: just just let me kill all these people and I'll
Speaker 3: give you great, great technology and knowledge. You can advance
Speaker 3: science by one hundred years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So it's you know, it's it's a legitimate temptation.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: You know, here is someone who has or something that
Speaker 1: has existed, you know, through for large expanses of Earth's history,
Speaker 1: and also has knowledge of world beyond the Earth and
Speaker 1: technologies beyond earth capabilities. But is it worth all of
Speaker 1: this death and perhaps future death and madness? And ultimately
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee's character says no, I don't want any part
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: Saxton refuses, and in the end, the heroes work together
Speaker 3: to uncouple the what is it the break car or something,
Speaker 3: one of the cars from the rest of the train
Speaker 3: so that it can separate while the rest of the
Speaker 3: train is sent off the edge of a cliff with
Speaker 3: all of the with the alien and all of the
Speaker 3: zombies it has created within it. Wait, I can't did
Speaker 3: you already say it resurrects zombies? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, resurrected a bunch of red eyed zombies. So even
Speaker 1: like undead Telly Savalis is walking around. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: like the commitment because these look like very uncomfortable contacts
Speaker 1: that everyone is wearing. Yes, and I'm kind of I'm
Speaker 1: kind of glad that even the bigger built stars also
Speaker 1: had to wear them. But yeah, the train goes off
Speaker 1: a cliff, blows up, and this is the first time
Speaker 1: we really, or at least I really realized, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a model train, mainly because you know, they're not
Speaker 1: going to send an actual train, multiple train cars off
Speaker 1: of a cliff. But it still looks pretty good. Still
Speaker 1: looks it's a pretty good model nonetheless, And.
Speaker 3: Do I remember right that we get no comment whatsoever
Speaker 3: from our heroes at the end of the film. It's
Speaker 3: just the car goes the train goes off, the tracks, explodes,
Speaker 3: and that's the end.
Speaker 1: There's no closing monologue. I think, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: seventies at this point. You know, the preachiness of the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties is over. In the seventies, it's more
Speaker 1: of a gosh, what can I tell you? There's ancient
Speaker 1: evil out there in the world and the future is uncertain.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just got to run trains off of a cliff.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if we had had christ per Lee
Speaker 3: saying he learned almost too late that man is a
Speaker 3: feeling creature.
Speaker 1: It would have sort of worked, you know, all right?
Speaker 1: So that's horror express it sure is. Again, this is
Speaker 1: a super fun one. I highly recommend seeking it out
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, and if you have seen it, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a fun one to revisit. You'll always find
Speaker 1: something new, a lot of fun plot elements, a lot
Speaker 1: of fun performances. Treat just a reminder to everyone that
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This
Speaker 1: week they were both train related, related to haunted trains
Speaker 1: and ghost trains, so check those out if you if
Speaker 1: you haven't already. But on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: series concerns to just talk about a weird film, such
Speaker 1: as this one on Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 1: a full list of all the movies we've covered on
Speaker 1: Weird House over the years, and even a peek ahead
Speaker 1: at what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 1: It's l E T T E R box d dot
Speaker 1: com and our user name there is weird House. That's
Speaker 1: where you'll find a list.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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